


holocene

by timelimez



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Canon Compliant, Ghosts, Minor Violence, Trauma, implied PTSD, the in between
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29835450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelimez/pseuds/timelimez
Summary: canon compliant dream smp oneshots that were too short to be posted as their own stories. all sfw.
Kudos: 18





	1. the in between (karl)

Frosted glass windows mute the sunlight. The halls are long with tall ceilings, intricate patterns and pillars adorning each wall. You should feel out of place here, in such a grand building, but it feels strangely familiar. Still, something seems off.

Who wrote these books you keep discovering? Was it you? Was it you from the future, or have you just forgotten that you wrote them in the past?

What did you discover that made you feel the need to warn yourself?

Seeing yourself for the first time is jarring. You—the other you that you run into—doesn’t seem bothered at all. No, he walks right past, mumbling under his breath, looking around frantically like he’s missing something. There are bags under his eyes and his hair is messy. Something’s wrong.

The books you find begin to contain stranger messages. The handwriting that was once so neat has changed into a hurried scrawl, some letters almost illegible, like a horrid beast with gnarly claws tearing across each page.

You never have time to think too hard about it, to figure out why everything seems so off. Every time you start connecting the dots in your head, you’re suddenly dumped back in a cave, whirling portal ruffling your hair, and the details of the palace are already too fuzzy to remember.

How does a time traveler not have enough time?

You don’t know. The more you time travel, the more messy everything becomes, the more the details just don’t add up. These people you keep meeting, these towns you keep visiting, something is undeniably _off_.

You don’t even realize that you’ve drifted away from your real friends, your _home,_ until it’s too late. You barely recognize their voices anymore, you’re forgetting simple details about your best friends. _You’re hurting them._

But you need to put everything together. It’s like one of those stupid all-white puzzles; you know that there’s a solution, there must be, there _has_ to be, but there’s nothing to help you, not even a hint of color.

This is bigger than your friends. This is bigger than _you._ And you can’t just give up on it.

You have to make things right. 

_You have to stray from the path._


	2. oh brother of mine (tommy afterlife)

It’s fucking cold.

That’s the first thing Tommy notices. It’s fucking cold, and he’s on the ground, and he doesn’t know where he is. 

Reaching up to rub his eyes, which feel like they’ve been closed for hours and hours, he gets off of the ground, trying to take in his surroundings. Untouched trees, rolling hills, a small, pristine lake. It almost looks like… 

“What the hell are you doing here?” A familiar voice, one he hadn’t heard in so painfully long, sounds behind him. Tommy whips around, eyes going almost comically wide at what he sees.

“Wilbur?” He asks, unease settling in his stomach. Something’s wrong. _Of course something’s wrong, idiot, you’re fucking dead._

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Wilbur says, taking off his dark jacket and tossing it to Tommy easily before turning to walk away from him. With a pang, Tommy recognizes it as the jacket he was wearing when he died. It at least gets rid of the chattering in his teeth when he pulls it on.

“I… where the fuck are we? How - What’s going on?” Tommy scurries to catch up with Wilbur, falling into stride next to him. Wilbur doesn’t make eye contact, watching the path in front of him instead,

“Just shut up for once in your life, Tommy, will you?” Wilbur glances over, grabs Tommy’s wrist, dragging him along as he picks up the pace.

“Where are we even going? You - you can’t just - Is this hell? What the fuck?!” Tommy yanks his hand out of Wilbur’s grip, despite the small voice in the back of his telling him to hug his fucking brother again. Not until he figures out what’s happening. Not after how he _left him_ like that to pick up the shattered pieces of his own nation.

“Just— he’s up here, okay? He’ll have your answers.” As they reach the top of the hill they’ve been climbing, Wilbur presses a hand between Tommy’s shoulders to push him forward, sending him stumbling and almost falling on the downward slope.

“Hey! What the fuck!” Tommy hisses, anger and confusion bubbling in his veins. turning around to watch Wilbur, who’s standing still on top of the hill. “I don’t think fucking _Schlatt_ will be able to help me figure out what’s going on, dumbass.” He scoffed, glancing over his shoulder to see smoke billowing out from behind a few trees.

When he turns back around, Wilbur is gone. _Again_.

Muttering under his breath, Tommy shoves his hands into the pockets of Wilbur’s coat and follows the smoke. At least Schlatt would probably talk to him, not give shitty cryptic answers.

The person he sees when he enters the clearing was possibly the last person he’d expected to see.

“Dream?!” He screeches, throat suddenly tightening up and nausea erupting in his stomach. His palms itch as an all too familiar feeling of terror claws at his chest, searching for a crack to seep into his heart. He’d rather be with an answerless Wilbur than have to be in that man’s presence for another second. 

Dream lifts his head, looking up at Tommy with a gaze too apologetic to even seem real. 

“How are you - you’re not dead - what the fuck?” He feels rooted to the spot, unable to run, petrified to the bone. Tears prick at his eyes as he hurriedly rubs them. _I don’t fucking cry._ “You just fucking _killed me_ , how are you here?” He yells, trying to keep his breathing as even as humanly possible.

“That wasn’t me—“

“Yes it fucking was, prick! You beat me to death in that fucking cell!”

“No, Tommy, that was _my body,_ but it wasn’t me. Please. Just.” Dream looks like he’s struggling for words. “You need to listen to me, okay?” He looks back up at Tommy, and somehow, that look alone strikes something in him. 

He doesn’t look like Dream. Not the Dream that Tommy’s used to, at least. He’s not wearing a mask, he’s not wearing armor, he looks like… he looks like he used to. Before L’manberg, before any great divides or secret alliances. He looks _human_. Horrifyingly so, especially compared to the empty, soulless shell of a man that had beat him into unforgiving obsidian walls only minutes ago.

“You need to listen.” Dream repeats. “I’m sorry for everything I did, or, I guess, _it_ did, okay? But it’s - I’m not in control of my living body right now.”

Tommy blinks hard, staring at Dream. “You really expect me to believe that? After everything you fucking did to me, to - to _everyone_?” He snaps.

“Tommy, how else would I even be here if I wasn’t telling the truth?” Dream gestures to the ghostly familiar forest surrounding them. Tommy swallows his words.

“Just - just sit down, okay? There’s a lot to explain.”


End file.
